DM-ing with a stutter?
I have a friend who plays in my regular D&D game and has a pretty significant stutter. The rest of the party are great about this and are very patient and understanding, so I'm not looking for advice in that area, but this friend has also expressed a desire to create and run a campaign. I would love to play in his game, but I know he worries that his stutter would severely restrict his ability to be an effective DM. Unfortunately, at least as far as traditional DM-ing is concerned, I think he's just objectively correct. But that got me wondering - are there ways to work around his impediment or rearrange the typical flow of a D&D session that could allow him to do it?
Things we've considered:
- Asynchronous play by text (in Discord): This technically would work just fine, but it obviously doesn't feel the same as real-time play where everyone is in the moment together. IIRC, the last time we talked about this, he didn't really sound interested in pursuing it.
- Him doing the writing and prep and me actually running the game: This also would technically work, and I told him I'd be honored to do it, but I'm sure he'd prefer to not have to filter his ideas through someone else and trust that person to execute them faithfully. I know I would feel bad every time I failed to deliver something the way he intended. I also wouldn't be able to be a player for him if we did this.
Things I've wondered about but not suggested yet:
- Is there some sort of text-to-speech (TTS) engine that he could use to help him run the game in near real time? I'm thinking like a Stephen Hawking situation. This would relieve the social pressure of having to overcome the stutter, and it would also allow him to write chunks of speech ahead of time and just paste them in at game time. There would of course be delays as he types out improvised parts, but it would still be closer to a traditional experience than something like asynchronous play.
- Is there a way we could pull off a kind of co-DM arrangement where he's more involved in the moment, rather than simply writing and planning? This would still take me out of his pool of potential players, but it would be better than me just running the game by myself. What could this look like?
Are there possibilities I'm not considering? What tools and strategies could he/we use to mitigate this and help him be successful as a DM? Is there a way to dramatically reimagine what a D&D session looks like that might still be fulfilling for him and everyone involved?
Edit: Should have mentioned we play online, so computer-based tools would be excellent options. They'd fit in very naturally.
Obviously the solution will be highly specific to him personally, and I'm not trying to solve all his problems for him without taking into consideration what he wants. We've talked several times over the years about his stutter and his attempts to eliminate it, and it's a conversation we return to every so often. I'd just like to have some ideas to suggest next time this comes up.
Thanks in advance, everyone!
If he really wants to do it, why not try a one shot and see how it goes? Way less commitment if something goes wrong, and actually playing the game could help highlight areas that he might need help in in a natural and organic way.
I can suggest this. I suspect he may not be enthusiastic about doing it fully traditionally but obviously I won't know unless I ask him. And it's definitely possible it could be useful as a diagnostic to figure out what specific adjustments would be most helpful for him. That's a great point about a one-shot being far less commitment.
yes! worst case he hates it and never wants to do it but the best case is he gets excited about actually doing it. I do think that @Aerrol 's text to speech idea is actually pretty interesting too.
We're going to do it! Still have to ask the party to play but I expect they'll be down. This should be a great first step. Thanks.
I am a pretty noted AI skeptic but this frankly sounds perfect for AI text to speech generation. As the mass proliferation of AI narrated videos on youtube demonstrates, it works very well and is miles better than the traditional Stephen Hawking type voice. I don't have specific recommendations though as I haven't needed it myself.
I can speak to co-DMing.
For about 2 years my wife was my co-DM, where I planned the story and plot points, and let her know what they were and what was important before the session started. She is a much better improviser and voice actor than me, so I would usually let her speak as the NPCs while I made determinations regarding outcomes or when to roll. It was also very handy when the party wanted to split up for a little bit, as she could just run the other half while I handled the main group.
I think it can work really well, if you set the right expectations. A co-DM will have to be able to make decisions themselves, so neither one can feel like they need to have every detail of the world under their control, but trust that the other side will make good decisions and be able to work with crazy changes. Also you need to communicate before the session starts and all the time, otherwise it just won't work.
If they are someone you feel like you can trust, and that they would trust you without worrying, I think it can work. If ether of you needs to be in total control, or are not good at communicating expectations and get upset when things do not go according to your plan, I would not recommend it.
This is really helpful! Definitely reframes the co-DM relationship for me. I guess I hadn't considered that it could still be very collaborative even in the moment (him deciding outcomes and when to roll etc). Thank you!
This sounds really cool. I wonder if you could have like a discord side chat where he gives you short lines or something in the moment for you to translate across to the party? Especially if he's a quick typist.
Yeah that's something else I was thinking - since we play via Discord anyway, the private mid-game communication would be right there. I don't know that he's an exceptionally speedy typist, but it would certainly help facilitate things either way!
Something I've considered before to DM is, in an online group or via Roll20 even in person, writing out a close-ish transcript of what the NPCs are saying while I say it. I tend to trip over myself talking, and I think it'd double as a good way to just have the dialogue accessible to the players. AI would help, but I'd want to be able to correct myself if I misspoke so there's no ambiguity. Might also be too much work.
This would be a fantastic idea for myself as a player because my ADHD makes it hard to understand speech. Especially when I have a bunch of dice and Minifigures and there are side chatter or interesting in person everything going on. I have trouble understanding what the DM says and troublem remembering what we're supposed to do or what that NPC said. Think of it as subtitles for everyone. :/
And then what @phoenixrises said, try a fun one shot.
Recently saw Drew King's stand up special as a comic with a stutter. It works :)
Half idea I had for a campaign one off was a party wanders into a village out of Dragon Quest or Pokemon, where every villager has one or two lines that they repeat, party members are compelled to shift their weight and idle in place when their turn comes up in a battle, and part of the mystery is why this village is the way it is and it would play well to a an already prepared script.
I’ve been looking at StenoKeyboards and their little $50 Asterisk, $100 Uni v4, and $125 Polyglot keyboards. It would take time and practice but if you can achieve their stated 225wpm upper bound, you might be able to get a Text to Speech synthesizer to approach near conversational speeds.
Something like: you type and it speaks as it receives complete words or sentences from the buffer. Might require a custom setup to work, as I’m not fully sure if it works with standard computer apps or if one of the apps the company says it supports is mandatory, but it’s an intriguing idea. At least to me.
I have a suggestion of sorts, though it's a bit peculiar. Some friends of mine have been roleplaying online for several years now (it's not quite TTRPG, but close). They have synchronous sessions, with everyone meeting up on Discord around the same time, but while they talk OOC in voice chat during the session, they do everything IC in text chat.
I don't play with them myself, save for a few sessions a long time ago, but I know that format has worked well for them. The social aspect of voice chat sessions is conserved, and toleplaying in text makes it easier to stay consistent with your character and helps prevents OOC and IC interfering. Plus, it means everything important's written down! If there's any players like me in your group, who have terrible memory and struggle to both pay attention and note things down at the same time, it'd be a benefit for them as well.
My pals have been doing this for close to ten years now, about as long as Discord has existed. Before this, they were using Minecraft as their medium. They've had lots of engaging adventures using this format. It is quite peculiar, and I imagine it could be more difficult to work with in a full TTRPG rather than the lighter system they've got going on, but it might be worth considering nonetheless.
That's fascinating, I wouldn't have thought of that. So the OOC voice conversations aren't necessarily related to the game? Or they mostly are? I feel like I would get too focused on what's happening in the game and not really engage with things external to that, but who knows!
There's occasionally unrelated convos but they're usually mostly reacting to the events of the game. You can discourage your table from off-topic conversations if you want!
Interesting! Thanks for mentioning this, it's going on my list of things to suggest!